Prudent and Practical

Bleach and Water (http://www.tipking.co.uk/tip/3107.html)

• Use the cleaning properties of bleach and put the dryer to work
• How effective: This was THE MOST effective, least time and labor consuming treatment. The set up time is minimal and the machine does all the work for you, NO SCRUBBING! I was successful in removing about 95% of the stains after 2 drying cycles.
• Set Up: Place 2 cups of bleach in a one gallon bucket then fill the bucket halfway with water. Put some old white towels in the bucket and soak up the solution. Remove the towels and wring out the excess solution, leaving the towels damp.
• Procedure: Place damp towels directly into the dryer and run an entire cycle. Repeat if necessary.
• Time: To set up: about 2 minutes. Drying cycle times will very, but about 30-60 minutes.

ALL CLEAN!

Conclusion

The bleach and water solution did the trick. It was very easy to set up, and best of all, involved almost no manual labor to clean the stains. The drying cycle did all the work. After running 3 cycles, I can no longer tell there was an ink pen explosion in my dryer, and I can do laundry again. Keep in mind, there are other recommended ways to clean ink stains that I have not listed here. Some include using other more industrial strength products like Acetone, Goof Off, Goo Gone Extreme, vegetable shortening, WD-40, and even Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.  But after using the bleach solution, there want enough stains left to test the other product.

But don’t fear, with my track record with ink pens & laundry, I am sure sometime in the future I will be getting that all too familiar scowl from my wife again and I will have a chance to experiment with these other products. It was also suggested by some people to run a cycle of the dryer to heat up the stains and help “loosen” it form the surface. I didn’t try this on most of the products for fear of setting the stain, but some people report success.

Summary

Cleaning ink stains from the dryer is easy with techniques in this article. Don’t spend money on expensive cleaners when simple bleach can do the trick.